In my effort to reduce our plastic waste footprint, I’ve made many small changes to our lifestyle over the years. They’ve added up to over 25+ easy ways to go plastic-free. One thing I didn’t include in that list that I thought deserved its own post is buying plastic-free bread. Yes, bread. Delicious, crusty, warm fresh from the oven bread. One of my biggest weaknesses in life. I. Love. Bread.

We go through a lot of it in our household. Bread for sandwiches. Bread for breakfast toast. Bread to go with our night cheese habit.

And the thing is, in most grocery stores nowadays, bread is sold in plastic bags. While there are many great ways to reuse and upcycle plastic bags, a better solution is to avoid using them at all.

So what’s a bread-loving gal or guy to do? 

 

Here are my simple tips for buying plastic-free bread and plastic-free bread storage:

 

Buy from the baker!

Most bread you’ll find on the supermarket shelves will be packaged in plastic, because it was made many miles away and shipped to the store in those plastic bags for safety and freshness. But if you buy your bread directly from a bakery, chances are they will be displayed fresh on the shelf. You’ll be supporting a small business and buying fresh bread at the same time. Win-win.

 

Ask for paper.

This may seem wild, but you may have a choice about how they bag up your bread! Even at the bakery at Whole Foods – where they bake delicious boules of organic sourdough, pumpernickel, and other grains fresh every day – they have paper bread bags you can opt for instead of plastic.

TIP: Ask the store to slice your fresh bread loaf for you before they bag it up!

 

Bring you own bread storage bag!

If your local grocery store or baker doesn’t happen to carry their own plastic-free bags, bring your own! My cousin bought me a lovely canvas bread bag a while back that I use regularly. There are a ton of them available to buy on Amazon in so many cute designs!

“You are the loaf of my life.”

“I kneed you.”

 

Here are some of my favorites:

This post contains Amazon Affiliate links, which if you click on them to buy a product may help me earn a small commission. You can read more about this on my Disclaimers page. 

 

 

All are washable and can be reused over and over again.

Or if you’re crafty, you can make your own bread bags! This DIY tutorial from Attainable Sustainable shows you how to upcycle linen bread bags from thrift store napkins.

 

Store in a glass container or bread storage box at home.

If you’re worried about the bread staying fresh once it gets home from the store, simply transfer it into a bread storage container or glass box! We have a big set of glass storage containers that we use for a variety of things, including our bread storage. So as soon as the perishable groceries are put away in the fridge, our next step is to seal the bread in a container!

 

 

While, yes, the lid on this is plastic, the bottom being made from tempered glass can be used in the oven, freezer, and microwave, and has a much longer life than a storage container with a plastic bottom. I’ve heard stories of plastic tupperware cracking in the freezer, and you definitely don’t want to use them in the microwave because of leaching plastic chemicals. And since I bought this container towards the beginning of my eco-friendly journey, and it would be wasteful to throw away at this point, I continue to use it. They now sell glass containers with bamboo lids too, so if I had to buy a whole new set now, that’s what I’d probably go with.

Here are some of the plastic-free bread storage container ideas for home I mentioned above:

 

 

Money-saving tip: buy at the end of the day!

This is a trick I learned from my extremely frugal mother while growing up in New York City. One of the best – and priciest – New York grocers in Manhattan is Zabars. Maybe you’ve heard of their famously thin-cut lox, chocolate babka, or their charmingly crowded Upper West Side store? Zabars has been mentioned in a whole schmear of television shows like Seinfeld, Sex And The City, and the movie YOU’VE GOT MAIL. They also make some of the most delicious baked goods ever.

So my mom, always on the lookout for a deal, discovered that their baked items go on sale right before the store closes. Because any decent bakery makes all their items fresh each morning and would never sell yesterday’s stale goods.

You probably have a bakery near you that offers the same discount.

So every month or so my mom would stock up on enough buttery croissants and sourdough loaves to feed an army. And after we’d eat one…or three…of the croissants, we’d put the rest right into the freezer.

 

Freeze it!

Why? Because bread freezes beautifully. This is a lesson that is apparently important enough that one of my husband’s best friends mentioned it in his speech at our wedding, having been taught this tip as a kid by my beloved father-in-law, who was clearly as good at giving helpful advice as he was at supporting Eco Friendly Mama.

When you’re ready for a slice of toast, just take it right out of the bread storage container in the freezer, place into the toaster oven for five minutes and voila! Perfectly toasted bread every time.

 

Love to bake? Make it yourself!

Of course, one of the easiest ways to have plastic-free bread is to bake it yourself. I recently purchased an Instant Pot during Amazon Prime Day, and was pleasantly surprised to discover that – among the many fast and easy recipes you can make with it – Instant Pot can also be used to make no-knead bread! Here’s an easy 4 ingredient recipe if you’d like to try it out!

 

 

Have you tried bringing your own plastic-free bread bags to the store or using paper bags instead? Please let me know your thoughts in the comments!

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